"No one should ever
have to say 'I am moving from America to Singapore because it is more
hospitable to innovation and entrepreneurship.' Just the opposite should be
true. 'You will know you're successful,' said PV Kannau, the India outsourcing
entrepreneur, 'if new companies in China and Brazil say, 'We want to move our
headquarters to America because that is the best place in the world to do
business.''
That's not happening right now, because our regulatory and tax
scheme is far from the best in the world....
"Twenty years ago, even ten years ago, a report such as this
one would never have been commissioned.
"The United States was the best country
in the world for business of any kind, the one with the largest and most open
market, the most transparent legal system with the strongest property rights,
the biggest and most efficient financial system, the most modern
infrastructure, and the most dynamic ongoing research and development in almost
every field.
"It was a magnet for capital and talent.
"No company of any size,
indeed no company that merely aspired to international growth, could afford not
to operate there, and none needed a consultant to tell it that.
"Now, alas, things are different.
"Over the past decade
especially, American has changed, and not for the better."
How many more voices need to say the same thing before
Washington listens?
Until we free up the American economy, reduce the red-tape
and taxes on small business, and become the most inviting economy on earth, our
economic problems will continue.
Many believe they will get worse--much worse.
The real tragedy is that all this is avoidable. Free
enterprise works.
America knows how to incentivize and encourage business
growth. It's time to get serious about restoring our free-enterprise
economy--and soon!
The United States has one of the highest business tax rates
in the developed world, and one of the most burdensome regulatory schemes.
Of
course we can't compete in such circumstances.
The question every American should ask is simply, why?
Why
would the country that stands most for freedom in all world history now turn
its back on the principles of freedom that made it great?
would we put our
trust in bureaucracy, regulation and government rather than the proven dynamism
of American enterprise?
Whatever the answer, unless we make changes quickly the
economic forecast ahead is dismal.
Friedman said America is like a nation
turned upside down.
At the bottom is an enterprising people passionately
seeking to overcome economic challenges with innovation, ingenuity and
tenacity, while at the top is a government consistently blocking the
entrepreneurial efforts of its people.
Again, we can only ask, "Why?"
One thing is certain.
Friedman and Mandelbaum rightly argue
that the best way out of this is not so much to study the fall of Rome, the
Ottoman Empire, or other historical examples of what not to do, but to make a
national focus of studying what worked best in our own American history.
We know the answers, because they are part of our national
heritage.
It is time to put aside our modernist sense of superiority and admit
that we want what past generations had economically and so we must learn what
worked for them.
It will work again, if we are willing to learn and make the
needed changes, because the principles of freedom are timeless and powerful.
Decline is not inevitable, but only a wise people well-studied in the
principles of historical success can avoid it.
We must become such a people.
| 
Social Leader Daily by Oliver DeMille
